A Lick of Frost Read online

  Andais had been shocked when my father left faerie to raise me among the humans, and she had been equally shocked when, many years later, nearly her entire guard would have followed me into the Western lands. For her, to leave faerie was worse than death, and she couldn’t understand why it wasn’t a fate worse than death to everyone else. What she failed to understand was that the queen’s mercy had become a fate even worse than exile.

  I stared into Crystall’s luminous, hopeless eyes, and my throat tightened around the tears that I knew I could not afford to shed. Andais had left us a present to look at, but she’d be watching, and she would see tears as weakness. Crystall was her visual aid. Her example to us, to me. I wasn’t certain what the message was supposed to be, but in her mind there was one. But, Goddess help me, other than her jealousy and hatred of rejection I couldn’t see any message here.

  “Oh, Crystall,” I said. “I am sorry.”

  His voice had reminded me of the sound of chimes in a gentle wind. Now it was a painful croak. “You did not do this, Princess.”

  His eyes flickered toward what I knew was the outer door, though I could not see that part of the room. His face closed down, and for a moment where there had been hopelessness there was rage. A rage that he stuffed down, and hid behind eyes that showed as neutral a face as he could find.

  I prayed that Andais hadn’t seen that moment of rage. She’d try to beat it out of him if she had.

  The queen swept into the room dressed in a loose, flowing black robe. It left open a triangle of white flesh, the flat perfection of her stomach and a trace of her belly button. There was a thin cord tied across the high, tight planes of her breasts that kept the front of the outfit from spilling open completely. There were long, wide sleeves that left most of her forearms bare. She must have been called away on important business to have put on that much clothing with Crystall still in her bed. He wasn’t hurt enough for her to be finished with him.

  She’d tied her long black hair back in a loose tail of hair. The ribbon she’d chosen was red. I’d never seen her wear red before, not even a spot of it. The only red the queen liked on her person was other people’s blood.

  I couldn’t have explained it, but that red ribbon made my stomach clench tight, and my pulse speed. Andais slid onto the bed in front of Crystall, but close enough that she could stroke the untouched flesh of his back. She stroked him idly as you would a dog. He flinched at her first touch, then settled down and tried not to be there.

  She looked at us with her tricolored eyes: charcoal, to the color of storm clouds, to a pale winter gray that was nearly white. Her eyes went so perfectly with the black hair and the pale skin. She was so made for Goth fashion, like Abe, except she was scarier than any Goth on the planet. Andais was serial-killer scary, and she was my father’s sister, my queen, and there was nothing I could do about either.

  “Aunt Andais,” I said, “we have arrived from the hospital to tell you much news.” We had already agreed that we needed to be clear from the beginning that we were telling her the news at the first opportunity.

  “My queen,” Doyle said, doing an awkward sitting bow as far as the bandages would allow.

  “I have heard many rumors this day,” she said, in a voice that some thought was a throaty, seductive sound, but that had always filled me with dread.

  “Goddess knows what the rumors are,” Rhys said as he moved back to stand by the bed, near me. “The truth is weird enough.” He said it with a smile and his usual teasing lightness.

  She gave him a flat look that was anything but friendly. There would be no lightening her mood if that look was any indication. She turned those angry eyes back to Doyle.

  “What could possibly injure the Dark itself?” Her voice was angry, and almost disinterested. She knew, somehow she already knew. Who the hell had talked?

  “When the Light appears, the Darkness must leave,” Doyle said, in his best flat nothing voice.

  She ran the bright redness of her lacquered nails down Crystall’s back. She left red lines, though she didn’t quite break the skin. Crystall turned his face away from the mirror and from her, afraid, I think, that he could not control his expression. “What light is bright enough to conquer the Darkness?” she asked.

  “Taranis, King of Light and Illusion, is still potent in his hand of power,” Doyle said, his voice even emptier than her own.

  She dug fingernails into Crystall’s back just below the shoulder blade, as if she meant to dig a handful of flesh out of his back. Blood began to show around her hand, like water filling a hole in the ground, slowly seeping upward.

  “You seem preoccupied, Meredith. Whatever could be the matter?” Her voice was almost conversational, except for that edge of cruelty.

  I decided to concentrate on the things that might distract her from tormenting the man in her bed. “Taranis attacked us through the mirror in the lawyer’s office. He injured Doyle, and Abeloec. He was trying for me when Galen got me to safety.”

  “Oh, I doubt he meant to injure you, Meredith, even in his madness. I suspect he was trying for Galen.”

  I blinked at her. The way she said it meant that she knew something that we did not. “Why would he target Galen?”

  “Ask yourself first, niece, why he accused Galen, Abeloec, and Rhys of raping the Lady Caitrin.” Her hand dug deeper into Crystall’s flesh, causing tiny red lines to begin to trickle over his skin.

  “I do not know, Aunt Andais,” I said, and fought to keep my own voice even and empty. I was trying not to show either fear or anger, though right now, fear was by far the strongest emotion. She was pissed, and I didn’t know why. If she knew about the offer of the Seelie throne to me, then she might be pissed at that, but if I blurted it out, she’d think I felt guilty and I didn’t. She was always so difficult to deal with, like being in the middle of a minefield. You know you have to get to the edge, but how to do that without getting blown up, that was always the question.

  “Oh, come, Meredith, think. Or are you so little Unseelie and so much Seelie that all you can think about is fertility?”

  “I thought my fertility was supposed to be the thing I thought about most if I am to be your heir, Aunt Andais?”

  She drew her fingers together, forcing a sound from Crystall. She’d made bloody scratches on his back like some evil flower carved into his flesh. She raised her pale hand so I could watch his blood drip down her fingers.

  “Are you going to be my heir, Meredith, or is there another throne that calls to you more?”

  There, she’d said enough that I could address it. “It is true that when Taranis was subdued by his nobles they offered me a chance at his throne.”

  “You told them yes.” She hissed it at me, standing and striding toward the mirror.

  “I did not. I told them we would have to discuss such news with our queen, with you, Aunt Andais, before I could say yes or no.”

  She was at the mirror now, blocking our view of the bed and Crystall. Her anger had awakened her power. Her skin was beginning to glow. Her eyes were filling with the light, but not the way that most of the sidhe’s eyes glowed with power. She seemed to have light behind her eyes, as if someone had set a candle behind all that gray and black. For the rest of us, for the most part, the individual colors glowed, but not her. She was queen, and she had to be different.

  “I heard you jumped at the chance, you ungrateful little bitch.”

  “You have been lied to then, Aunt Andais.” I fought to keep my voice neutral.

  “Yes, remind me that you are my bloodline, my last chance to have someone of my line to rule after me. If you would but get with child, Meredith. Goddess knows you’re fucking everything in sight. Why are you not with child?”

  “I do not know, Aunt, but I do know that we came directly here from the hospital. We came into the house and to this mirror. We came to call you and tell you all that has happened. I swear to you by the Darkness that Eats all Things that I did not tell the Seelie I woul
d sit upon their throne. I told them we would have to speak to our queen before we could answer them.”

  Her eyes had begun to dim. Her power was beginning to fold away. Something tight in my stomach eased a little. I had used an oath that no fey would have taken lightly. There were powers older even than faerie, and they waited in the dark to punish oathbreakers.

  “You truly did not agree to sit on the golden throne and forsake our court?”

  “I did not.”

  “I must believe you, niece of mine, but the Seelie Court is thick with knowledge that you will be the next queen of their court.”

  Doyle reached across his body and touched me with his good arm at the same time that Rhys touched my shoulder. I touched Doyle’s thigh lightly and laid my hand on Rhys’s hand. “What they say, or think, I cannot control, but I did not agree to it.”

  “Why not?” she asked.

  “I have friends and allies among the Unseelie Court. To my knowledge I have no such thing at the Seelie Court.”

  “You must have powerful allies there, Meredith. They are voting Taranis unfit to rule even as we speak. They will then vote you queen. They would not do that unless you had been approached by the nobles of that court. You must have been courted by them before now. There must have been many secret meetings that I did not know of, and that none of our guards reported to me.”

  I was beginning to see where her anger was coming from, and I couldn’t entirely blame her. “One of the reasons I said no, and made clear that I must speak with you first, was exactly that, Aunt Andais. I have not been approached in any way by the nobles. Taranis was almost unnaturally persistent in his desire to have me at one of their Yule celebrations, but other than that I have not had dealings with the Seelie Court. I swear this to you. That is why the offer makes me suspicious as to what they truly want of me.”

  “I know Hugh. He is a political animal. He would not have offered it to you unless he had a reason to do so. You swear to me that he has never before approached you about this?”

  “I swear,” I said.

  “Darkness, tell me exactly what happened?”

  “I fear, my queen, that I will be useless for this. To my deep shame, I was unconscious through most of it.”

  “You don’t seem that injured.”

  “Hafwen healed me at the hospital or I would still be there.”

  “Abeloec,” she said.

  Abe stirred behind us on the bed. He’d tried very hard to go unnoticed. “Yes, my queen.”

  “Do you know why Taranis would target you?”

  He sat up slowly, careful of his back, and ended by half kneeling almost on all fours behind us. “Once my power was necessary for the choosing of a queen, as Meabh’s power was to the choosing of a king. I think Taranis heard rumors that my power was returned to me, in part. I think he feared that I would help turn Meredith into a true queen of faerie. If we had known that any noble was dreaming of offering her the throne, then the accusations against me would have made some sense. He wanted me away from the princess.”

  “Galen,” she said, “why did he target you?”

  Galen looked flustered for a moment. He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  “Come, Galen Greenknight, greenman, why?”

  I had a thought. “He knows the prophesy that Cel got from the human psychic,” I said.

  “Yes, Meredith, because you and the greenman will bring life back to the courts. Taranis has made the same mistake my son did. He thinks that Galen is the greenman of the prophesy. Neither of them remember our history.”

  “The greenman means the god, the consort,” I said.

  Andais nodded. She turned those eyes to Rhys. “And you, why you? Have you figured it out yet?”

  “He heard the rumor that I’m Cromm Cruach again. If I were truly back to my original strength then he would fear me.”

  “Rumor has it that you can bring death to a goblin with a touch again. Is that rumor true?”

  “I have done it once,” he said, “but whether it will work again, I do not know.”

  “The rumor might be enough for Taranis,” she said. She seemed calmer. Which was good. She looked at Doyle. “I understand why he attacked you. If I were to try and kill the princess, I would kill you first, but he was wrong in not targeting our Killing Frost.” She turned those calm eyes to the big man standing so silent beside the bed. “To kill Meredith and survive would require both your deaths, wouldn’t it, Killing Frost?”

  Frost licked his lips. He was right to be nervous. This was not a conversation that we wanted to be having with our queen. “That is true, my queen,” he said.

  “Did the Seelie Court make the same condition on you that I do? Do you need to be with child before you can sit their throne?”

  “No, they offered the throne with no conditions except that the nobles of the Seelie Court vote Taranis out and me in.”

  “What do you think of that, Meredith?”

  “I am flattered, but not stupid. I am wondering if the nobles are playing some game of their own choosing, and the offer to me is simply to buy them time to consolidate their own bid for the throne. A vote to put me on the throne would slow the process of choosing a new king, or queen, for the Seelie Court to a crawl.”

  Andais smiled. “Did Doyle reason it out for you?”

  “No, my queen,” Doyle said. “The princess is well aware of the Seelie Court’s potential for treachery.”

  “Is it true that Taranis almost beat you to death as a child?”

  “Yes,” I said. In my head I added, as you tried to drown me. Out loud I kept my mouth shut.

  Andais smiled as if she’d hit on the same memory and it was a happy one for her. “Meredith, Meredith, you must learn to control your entire face. Your eyes betray how much you hate me.”

  I lowered my gaze, not sure what to say that wouldn’t be a lie.

  She laughed, and it was both a lovely sound and a sound that made me shiver, as if it were my own body lying on her bed unable to protect itself from what would come next. I wanted to save Crystall from her, but I couldn’t figure out a way to do it. Me trying and failing would just make her hurt him worse. She’d think it meant he was special to me, and it would amuse her all the more to slice him up.

  “Now that I know that you have not been meeting with Hugh and the Seelie nobles in secret, I agree that they mean you treachery. Perhaps you will be their stalking horse to lure out all the would-be assassins. Or perhaps it is what you say, that they simply throw your name into the ring to slow the process while someone else consolidates their own power. I think the latter the more likely, but the offer is so completely unexpected that I have not had time to think clearly on it.”

  What she meant was that she’d been convinced that I’d betrayed her with the Seelie Court, so she’d been too angry to think clearly. I kept my reasoning to myself. I had my face enough under control that I could look back up at her. Or I hoped I did. How do you tell if your own face is neutral?

  “The fact that Taranis knows of the prophesy that Cel got from the human prophet means that one of Cel’s trusted people is spying for the king of the Seelie Court.” She tapped her chin with one bloody fingernail. “But who?”

  There was a sound from the mirror, almost the clanging of swords. I glanced at the clock. “We are expecting a call from Kurage, Goblin King,” I said.

  “You have call waiting on your mirror,” she said.

  I nodded.

  “I’ve never heard of such a thing. Who did the spell?”

  “I did,” Rhys said. His face was still softly amused, but there was a wariness around his eyes.

  “You will have to bespell my mirror as well.”

  “Gladly, my queen,” he said, voice pleasantly neutral.

  The clang of swords sounded again. “Perhaps you should come back to court and do that today.”

  “With apologies, Aunt Andais, Rhys is to bed me if we can get time between calls and emergencies.”

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nbsp; “Would it upset you to see his pale flesh bleeding on my bed like Crystall’s?”

  There was no safe answer to that question. “I do not know what you want me to say, Aunt Andais.”

  “The truth would be nice.”

  I sighed. Doyle squeezed my hand. Rhys tensed beside me. It was then that Galen lost it. “What does it matter? Taranis attacked us today. He went so crazy that his own nobles jumped him and dragged him away. He’s about to be voted out as king of the Seelie Court, and you want to spend time tormenting Merry about us!” He actually stepped close to the mirror and continued to yell at her. “Doyle almost died today. Merry could have died today, and then you’d never have a child of your blood on any throne. The Seelie nobles are up to something dangerous that involves our court, and you want to play these stupid, painful games. We need you to be our queen, not our tormentor. We need help here. Goddess save us, but we do.”

  We might have jumped him to keep him quiet, but I think we were all too stunned to do anything. The silence was heavy, broken only by Galen’s too-fast breathing.

  Andais stared at him as if he’d just appeared. It wasn’t a friendly look, but it wasn’t an unfriendly look either. “What help would you have of me, Greenknight?”

  “Try to find out why Hugh offered the throne to Merry, really why.” voice. “That there are swans with gold chains, and that a Cu Sith stopped the king from beating a servant. The Seelie think Merry is to blame or gets credit for the return of the magic.”

  “And does she?” Andais asked with that edge of cruelty beginning to creep back in.

  “You know she does,” Galen said, and there was no anger, just a sort of righteousness, as if it was just truth.

  “Perhaps,” Andais said. She turned her gaze to me. “I will try and find out if Hugh is being honest, or as treacherous as we think. You must have some magic over men that I do not see, Meredith. You have not even fucked Crystall, yet he seems strangely loyal to you. I will break him to my ways again, then I will choose another of the men who would have deserted me for you. Sidhe who would have rathered followed you into exile than stay with me in faerie.” She said the last almost in a thoughtful voice, as if she truly didn’t understand it.